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Saturday, October 11, 2014

Impressions #16: Persona 4 Arena: Ultimax: Part 1

It is a
strange coincidence that Persona 4 Ultimax would be released during
my so-called “Season of ATLUS.” Considering that I just finished
Digital Devil Saga 2 the day before it came out, the timing could not
be any better. As a massive fan of the Persona franchise, I would be
lying if I said I was not predisposed to liking a new entry, even if
its not a game in the main series. That was no less true when the
original Persona 4 Arena was released. Even still, I am willing to
stand firmly behind it even without the brand name appeal. There is
quite a lot here, and much is done to appeal to every possible member
of the target audience.

Fans of
Persona 3 and/or 4 will be happy to note the inclusion of a story
mode. Taking place after the first Persona 4 Arena, Ultimax details
how the casts of Persona 3 and Persona 4 come together to uncover the
truth regarding what happened. As both groups begin to start their
investigations, a mysterious blood red fog covers Inaba. Both crews
are thrown headlong into a new “P-1 Climax” battle tournament
shortly afterward, and their captors state that the world will end if
they do not succeed in winning the tournament in one hour. From
there, the story goes in some pretty interesting, and surprising,
directions at times. Being a canonical story in the Persona universe,
it is almost required for fans to go through it at least once. The
tale is divided into episodes. First up is Episode P4, which tells
the story from the perspective of the Investigation Team from Persona
4. After that is completed, Episode P3 becomes available, which
retells the story from the point-of-view of the former SEES
operatives from Persona 3. While the overarching story remains the
same for both stories, there are significant differences between
them. At the same time, there are plot elements that are only hinted
at in one episode, that are explained in greater detail in the other,
and vice-versa. Ultimately, the True Ending, which is unlocked by
completing both episodes, makes it very clear that the P4 side to the
tale is canonical, while Episode P3 serves as more of a “What If?”
scenario.

Though
the story itself is very well written, and an incredible job of
bringing all of these characters together in a believable way, its
presentation leaves much to be desired. Fans of the original Persona
4 Arena probably will not be terribly surprised to hear that, as
Ultimax has the exact same style its predecessor had. The story is
told in a manner similar to visual novels, where characters are
represented by static 2D-artwork on top of a background image
representing the area they are in. When this does not suffice to
explain the action in the scene, a text description of the action is
displayed on top of these elements. On occasion, these scenes are
broken up by a battle, as dictated by the story. Even among fighting
games, this is not a terribly unique style of storytelling.

The
problem with this style, which feels even more pronounced here than
it did in the first Persona 4 Arena, is that these scenes take a
long, long time. It is not uncommon to spend an hour or more just
watching characters talk to each other before ever participating in a
battle. Because of the game's (admittedly handy) auto-advance mode
for dialogue, this almost literally means that players will not be
pressing any buttons at all for very prolonged periods of time. Even
when fights break out, the AI for the story mode opponents is
extremely stupid, so it takes almost no effort to trounce them with
little more than a few combos and throws. Should even that be too
much effort, the game even offers an “Auto Mode” which will make
the AI fight for the player. Yes, this would literally mean that the
player is watching the game play itself on the scant few moments that
the story gives them a moment to interact with it.

And that
transitions nicely into another thing I noticed when playing Ultimax.
While Persona 4 and Persona 4 Arena both had very long cutscenes
(even Persona 4 is infamous for having three hours worth of scenes
before players ever got to fight a monster), they had an interesting
way of keeping players engaged through that process. Persona 4
offered dialogue choices throughout all of these scenes. While those
choices rarely, if ever, had any significant meaning, they kept the
player's attention by giving them a chance to both think about what
transpired in the game, and express their views on it, even if those
views mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. Persona 4 Arena
also offered choice in terms of which character they used as a
viewpoint character and in what order they were played in.

In
either case, these kind of “meaningless choices” would serve to
greatly improve the end user-experience for Ultimax. It almost seems
like the writers forgot that they were making the script for a video
game. Usually, the only choice players have is in which character in
their current group gets to fight the upcoming battle. Aside from
that, the only dialogue choice made is right before the final boss,
and is one of the most obvious choices I have ever seen in a Persona
game. The game's presentation would have benefited from some
interactivity in order to keep players more engaged during the story
section. Some people are going to hate it, others will tolerate it in
the name of a good Persona story, but I hesitate to say that anyone
is going to “like” the presentation.

Unfortunately,
I appear to be a little too long in the tooth for this article. As I
was writing it, I realized that I was quickly approaching 2000 words.
I sincerely doubt many of you out there would be comfortable reading
all of this in one sitting. As a result, I decided to break this up
into two parts. We will leave off here, since I have finished
discussing story and presentation. Next week, I will discuss
mechanics, characters, and new additions to the game.